My poems, short stories, and other writings

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there are days when i hold my roots with pride–they emanate from the golden, bejeweled shalwar kameez and frocks i wear, from the scent of biryani and chicken korma that lingers through khalas and chachas and cousins and sisters seated for dinner.

and then there are days when I yearn to rip those clothes from my skin, dig deep with my nails so my grandparents’ war, my people’s toil, the beat of wedding drums in my father’s village, and the dirt from a land I call ‘back home’…. bleed out.

they say that we hate our roots when we criticize some of their deepest held traditions and beliefs and adages…they don’t know that we are the first ones to defend it before the white man vilifies it with his senseless tongue. they don”t know how our mind tires of exhaustion from responding to every attack of our brown skin, of our God, of our very existence.